Merry Men?

 As of the last reporting I saw yesterday, UK authorities still have no clear account of the motives or identity of the people they arrested earlier this week outside of the Fairfold air base. They released the suspects surprisingly quickly, however, which tends to suggest no one actually thinks they were linked to a violent terrorist plot. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, one emerging theory among the locals holds that "the men, all from London, may have been in the area to steal fuel[.]"

Obviously, we have no idea yet if that's true. But if it is, it paints a very different mental image. Instead of scary terrorists, they are now sounding more like Robin Hoods in the fine English tradition of Hobsbawmian "social banditry." They crept out of some Sherwood forest somewhere to pilfer diesel at a time of skyrocketing fuel prices. 

I know I shouldn't actually romanticize these guys. I'm sure they are tough customers all. But they made me think of the sympathetic heroine of Wordsworth's poem of social protest, from the Lyrical Ballads, "The Female Vagrant": 

... in journey dark

O'er moor and mountain, midnight theft to hatch;

To charm the surly house-dog's faithful bark.

Or hang on tiptoe at the lifted latch;

The gloomy lantern, and the dim blue match,

The black disguise, the warning whistle shrill....

Besides, there is a certain poetic justice to robbing the sheriff of Nottingham at this particular airbase—since it is most notorious currently for hosting U.S. war planes that have been used to bomb Iran—the very conflict that is pushing up fertilizer and fuel prices so ruinously worldwide, putting a severe strain on farmers across the globe. 

The Fairfold airbase is thus a fitting symbol of the root causes of the present diesel crunch—as well as of the enduring "Special Relationship" between US and UK militarism, the nature of which Harold Pinter described so well two decades ago—the last time the two countries were partnering together to inflict saturation bombing in a war of aggression in the Middle East.

Of course, I should reserve judgment. Maybe the men arrested this week were involved in something much more nefarious than what we know so far. Or maybe they were stealing from the poor and powerless, making them lousy Robin Hoods indeed. 

Besides, I'm not actually endorsing property crimes. Neither did Wordsworth's heroine. "[I]ll it suited me," she says; such activities "Were not for me, brought up in nothing ill"—she was simply forced to it by a total dearth of other options. For all we know, that may prove to be true of the men arrested earlier this week as well. Or perhaps not—we just don't know.  

But still, if they were just there to steal diesel, the disproportion between their minor crime, punishable by law, and the massive crimes the airbase is being used to commit—with no legal consequences, and with the full knowledge and resources of the US and UK governments behind them—is rather striking. 

So it has long been with the Robin Hoods of the world. To rob a few cans of diesel is outlawed—but to rob whole countries is rewarded as great statesmanship.

These men are suspected of stealing a few drums of oil. Donald Trump stole the entire oil supply of the sovereign nation of Venezuela. Then, last week, he bragged about it on the world stage, crowing in his UN address that "To the victor belong the spoils." One is arrested for thievery, the other continues to hold the most powerful political office on earth. 

So it goes. 

As Friar Tuck preaches in Thomas Love Peacock's Maid Marian:

What title had William of Normandy to England, that Robin of Locksley has not to merry Sherwood? William fought for his claim. So does Robin. With whom, both? With any that would or will dispute it. William raised contributions. So does Robin. From whom, both? From all that they could or can make pay them. Why did any pay them to William? Why do any pay them to Robin? For the same reason to both: because they could not or cannot help it. They differ indeed, in this, that William took from the poor and gave to the rich, and Robin takes from the rich and gives to the poor: and therein is Robin illegitimate[.]

So too, what right has Trump to the "spoils" of Venezuela or Iran that five London hoodlums do not have to a few drums of diesel? Surely, Trump would be the first to say: only the "right" of sheer force.

As Thomas Love Peacock observed with irony in a later preface to his short novels: "The great principle of the Right of Might is as flourishing now as in the days of Maid Marian[.]"

But as Anatole France wrote in The White Stone: "brute force, up to now the sole judge of human actions, indulges occasionally in unexpected pranks. Its sudden starts aside destroy an equilibrium thought to be stable. And its pranks, which are ever the work of some hidden rule, bring about interesting results." (Roche trans.)

One of those "unexpected pranks," France implies, is that those who live by the sword must expect to perish by it. A government like Trump's that willfully disregards international law and tramples over the weak must not expect much mercy when they are weak in turn. If they declare before the world that the only law from now on is the law of force, others might take them at their word. 

Then god help the rest of us who get caught in the middle!